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Month: May 2008

I don’t think I’m alone in this, but I’ve spent at least 70% of my shopping time digging through piles of S and XS sized shirts. I was surprised to find that in the men’s section, they put the larger sizes at the top of the pile, and they have more of the larger sizes than they do of the smaller sizes. It’s a small detail, but it’s something.

The NYTimes has a piece on a woman who writes to encourage men to join in the jihad against the West (the correct phrase might be to just join the jihad – I am not well-versed enough in Islam to know if there is only one jihad or if there are several flavors). She claims that the Taliban doesn’t oppress women, but gives them security. She wishes to be a part of Al-Qaeda, though the 2nd in command of the terrorist group has said that women are forbidden to join the ranks.

Not a fan of her choice, but I also can’t be in favor of women (and men) having the ability to make their own choices only when it aligns with my political beliefs. At least this dispenses with the notion that women are ‘naturally’ peace-loving and averse to violence.

On a separate note, congratulations to our newly-minted graduates! Good luck, ladies!

Here is a fantastic (really, just fantastic) blast from the past – the APA has posted the ‘Martial Scale,’ in which husbands rated their wives based on various characteristics – for example, having the ‘seem in your hose crooked’ is a demerit (I don’t wear hose, but imagine it would be fair grounds to kill), but a wife can redeem herself with the honorable ‘is religious.’ (Unfortunately, only the first page is available – though I’d have loved to see my other faults in spreadsheet fashion). While my boyfriend, a wise man, refused to rate me, I rated myself – and I got an astounding -18! Spinsterhood, here I come!

Do you know about Postsecret? It is an online art project created by Frank Warren, who posts anonymous cards with both touching and hateful confessions. Postsecret may push the envelope for free speech, but I still wince a little when I see something like this:

I can only guess that the point of this postcard is to highlight the inalienable experience one gets in having a child, and that the sender believes that this experience is permissible (by divine right) to women alone.

Ultimately, this postcard is one of many examples of an unwillingness to look more deeply into things which challenge and invert our social norms. They are instead labeled (too quickly) as sinful, immoral, and wrong.

Those who know me know of my vitriolic hatred of Facebook, but this just gives me one more thing to add to my litany of reasons of why on this cultural phenomenon, I’m right.

A new application entitled ‘Pieces of Flair’ has been created wherein you can choose fancy buttons to put on your profile. While all of the buttons are a poor excuse for humor and originality, some are downright un-fucking-believable. For instance, individuals can now have a fancy red button on their profile that proclaims, “It’s not rape – it’s surprise sex!”

BBC has an article today that raises a most unexpected question: who has the right to call themselves a lesbian? Well, anyone who identifies as one, you might propose. But does that mean homosexual women, or the Greek islanders of Lesbos? Currently, campaigners on the island are preparing to go to court to prevent a gay rights organization from using the term lesbian, and if they are successful they would like to make this an international fight. The term was inspired by Sappho, a poet native to Lesbos of the 7th century who once wrote of her love for another woman, but apparently killed herself over love for a man. Check it out.